December 17, 2010

What was in the news on Dec. 16, 1960?

By Brandon A. Evans

50 Year LogoThis week, we continue to examine what was going on in the Church and the world 50 years ago as seen through the pages of The Criterion.

Here are some of the items found in the Dec. 16, 1960, issue of The Criterion:

  • Are Sunday closing laws legal? Supreme Court to decide issue
    • “WASHINGTON—Defenders and opponents of Sunday closing laws clashed for two days before the U.S. Supreme Court in a conflict whose outcome will have an impact wherever such laws are on the books. Supporters of the Sunday laws argued that they are necessary social measures designed to guarantee workers a weekly day of rest and to protect the community against the evils of seven-day-a-week business. But opponents contended the laws’ real purpose is religious and that they violate the U.S. Constitution by protecting the Christian day of worship in preference to that of other religions.”
  • From a photo caption: “These four young people represent the thousands of archdiocesan Catholic youth who are actively campaigning to ‘Put Christ Back Into Christmas.’ Last year more than 20,000 stickers, posters and stamp books were distributed.”
  • Cuba church bombings branded Red reprisal
  • Pope deplores assaults on sanctity of family
  • Stimulus to Reading: Junior Gret Books now in third year
  • Christianity in Sudan being slowly strangled
    • From a report by Rev. Pat O’Connor: “KHARTOUM, The Sudan—Sudanese Christians are undergoing a steady, strangling persecution. Nothing equal to it has been waged anywhere outside communist-ruled countries in the postwar years. As under communist governments, this persecution in the Sudan is a gradual process, not a blazing, frontal attack. So churches are still open. One new church is being built. … But in the south, where most of the Sudan’s nearly 400,000 Christians live [three-fourths of them Catholics], the noose of religious persecution is drawn ever tighter.”
  • Council expected to begin in 1962
  • Question Box: Are many changes planned for missal?
  • Holy See lists days when Mass must be offered for the people
  • Protestant church body appeals for racial justice

With this being the last issue of The Criterion this year, below are some other headlines that were found in the final two issues of 1960.

From the Dec. 23, 1960, issue:

  • Seek Christian unity with charity, Vatican official urges Catholics
  • Archbishop Ritter is first Hoosier Cardinal
  • Providence nuns to adopt new headdress Dec. 27

From the Dec. 30, 1960, issue:

  • ‘Based on Poverty’: Farm labor system called social blight
  • The medical insurance controversy
  • Catholic highlights of the past year
  • Present missals usable, faithful are reminded

(Read all of these stories from our Dec. 16, Dec. 23 and Dec. 30 issues from 1960 by logging on to our special archives.) †

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